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Samsung Infringed On Apple Patents, Says ITC
The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that certain models of Samsung phone violate Apple patents, and are likely to be blocked from import to the U.S. From the article: "The patents in question are U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949, which relates to a touch screen and user interface and U.S. Patent No. 7,912,501 which deals with detecting when a headset is connected. The ITC said Samsung didn’t infringe on the other two patents. In a statement on the matter, the ITC said the decision is final and the investigation has been closed. ... As was the case with the previous ruling that saw Apple devices banned, the ban on Samsung devices won’t go into effect until 60 days but can be blocked by a favorable ruling following a presidential review. That seems unlikely as such a block has only been issued once since 1987 – last’s week’s ruling in favor of Apple."
They both blatantly copied each other constantly, misused patents, misused lawsuits and injunctions, etc. All these individual little patent disputes are really annoying. They should each be barred from suing each other for anything that happened prior to a certain date so we can be done with this. Then, if they want, they can just duke it out in a paintball game or Mario Party 9 or something.
Why would it be unlikely?
It's the same exact situation, just with the roles revers.. oh.
If samsung doesnt ge tthe same treatment as apple we know which company paid more in bribes.
obama has other things on his plate right now (putin!) and he's already weighed in on one of these oh-so-recently, so don't expect too much attention from him on this one.
What a kindergarten... just stop!
Who cares? Samsung has already won the battle! http://bgr.com/2013/07/26/mobile-phone-market-share-q2-2013/
... on foreign companies. I think we'll see more of this in the future, U.S gov getting at the foreign companies. Samsung should just stop supplying U.S companies and see how they start feeling about things. Don't just lie there waiting to get kicked again.
Signature intentionally left blank.
Ding ding, round n of "Boo-hoo :-( you make better phones than us and we can't find a way to collect 'our' money from 'our' customers via phone sales with you in the market."
No, I didn't RTFS or RTFA.
Requiem for the American Dream
Patents are meaningless and hurt the overall market. There, I said it.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
OK... I broke with Slashdot tradition and actually read TFA. That said, I STILL cannot figure out exactly which Samsung phones are being specifically banned in this ruling? Is it a top seller like the Galaxy S3 or Note II, or some older phones that only the prepaid carriers offer now?
Not that it really matters... 60 days is probably enough time to come up with a workaround to get around the infringement.
The Russians are pissed enough to harbour Snowden.
The Chinese aren't backing the US in the North Korea talks.
The Japanese just sailed their first war ship in 50 years.
I can think of a dozen wars that started with this sort of trade embargoes and tariffs. Just the precedent itself is enough to block US made goods in half the world.
It won't happen like it used to since everyone have Nukes now, but you can bet your Made-in-China-lives that the repercussion will be soon to follow.
I assume the ungodly ridiculous amounts of verbiage is not to be legally clear, but be legally obfuscating, wearing down patent examiners and causing days of study just to begin to get a handle on what they are claiming.
The one or two cool little tricks being patented, if any, are deliberately obfuscated.
Does anybody even know what little bit is supposedly infringed?
One of the "claims":
6. The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the one or more heuristics, a contact comprising a finger swipe gesture that initially moves within a predetermined angle of being perfectly horizontal with respect to the touch screen display corresponds to a one-dimensional horizontal screen scrolling command rather than the two-dimensional screen translation command.
So if you drag left or right witihin some predefined angle, it shall be considered a horizontal swipe rather than a 2D arbitrary angle swipe. And nobody ever did this before?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If you cannot win in the market, the next step is to win using the law - this is business 101 in the USA today.
and You?
Apple gets the presidential blessing for no good reason, how about Samsung?
Patents in both directions are bullshit anyway.
Samsung should close down Austin chip factory as a thank you to US government
The fix is in.
From PJ at Groklaw:
What BS.
So Apple is the only one who can make and sell devices with touch screen and icons
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
You mean, like a mechanical switch that comes built in to the jack chassis?
For crying out loud, I built an amplifier in high school in 1980 that could detect when a headset was detected. Making software detect the same thing would amount to merely polling on a physical line the switch is on and converting the voltage on it to a digital signal of true or false.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple has not dodged a cent of tax. They have paid more tax than just about all of the other corporations combined - six *billion* dollars just in 2012!
Apple pays what it owes - in the U.S.. Just as it pays the taxes it owes in OTHER countries.
Some people like you get upset because Apple does not bring the money back to the U.S. to be taxed a second time. Well, why would or should they? They are even willing to for a reasonable fee, but the U.S. does not have corporate tax rates anywhere near reasonable - they are higher than any country on earth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if you drag left or right witihin some predefined angle, it shall be considered a horizontal swipe rather than a 2D arbitrary angle swipe. And nobody ever did this before?
This one actually seems valid, I don't know of any touch screens before that even could detect angle of input much less adjusted for it in this way. Before hand most input did not really factor in angle of input at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please ITC, Fuck You Gently With a Chainsaw.
A free market. So how did that work again?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All these patents are nothing but obvious. What incredible inventions have these companies made? Switch on/Switch off
Such bullshit
As you can read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patentability
the US patent office pretends that one of the conditions for granting a US patent is non-obviousness.
Considering that it is very unlikely that someone swiping a finger across a touchscreen achieves a movement that is 100% horizontal and 0% vertical, it is obvious that any solution of the problem would tolerate a certain amount of vertical movement, and this is what that patent claim is about.
US american companies are promoting politicians with a kindergarten understanding of science, so that they can profit from that bullshit:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/13/07/12/1645228/google-raises-campaign-funds-for-climate-change-denier
Also, the invention of input gestures is not as novel as you seem to believe, because the patent was filed 2008, while for example the video game Black and White had gestures in 2001. Okay, it was mouse gestures, but there is no big difference to a touch screen regarding movement.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
On one hand, if you read claim 1 (the base claim), Apple actually spent effort on designing their own jack, which apparently has a special connector that creates a second circuit that is used for detection. On the other hand, the technical contribution seems to be a bit on the easy side, considering that the actual detecting circuit in figure 3 shows a circuit that is probably obvious to anyone schooled in designing circuits, though not to me.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Or is this iDunno?
But Apple don't want to pay what others paid for it.
You DO know the definition of "FRAND" is not "Better deal for Apple than anyone else gets" right?
No, you probably don't. It's a Merkin Company, and you're a Merkin too.
You DO know the F doesn't stand for FREE, right?
That means Apple still has to pay the FAIR and REASONABLE price, right? You don't get it free if you think the price is unreasonable either. Just because I think the latest GTA is overpriced doesn't mean I can just take it for nothing. Why do you think Apple can, though?
So the difference is that Apple had the price and refused to pay it but refused to stop using the patents without license. Therefore Apple KNEW they were in breech of license and that's wilful infringement.
I know the US patent office has given up on this, but they are supposed to not grant obvious patents, and doing anything on pc/internet/touchpad that has been done on paper/pc/touchscreen(yes, they existed before Apple) before most of the time sounds pretty obvious, especially when you consider that patents are usually formulated in legal language designed to stake a claim as broad as possible and as devoid of technical information as legal.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
The US interdimensional trade commission only applies to the US, so its the US trade commission. Its a both a pity and a PITA that they have the stupid patent laws, patent system, and patent industry that they do. Its not beneficial to anyone except multinationals. The multinationals pay politicians to vote for the policies they like, and pay extra to create the policies the politicians vote on so as to maximize profits. Consumers, private individuals, small companies are all left from the process by design. It doesn't work for them, but was never designed to. Fair use, obvious, and 'mathematical formula' are all laughable notions by both the politicians and corporations (unless a large well funded group of private individuals can out-bid the corporations).
Moronic Yanks have given their president absolute power - Obama is a dictator for his period in office like all new presidents now. Free to create any laws he wishes. Free to imprison or release any person he wants without oversight. Free to ignore ANY aspect of the Constitution or Common Law.
Now King Obama, with a giant Apple cheque in his family bank account (fully legal under the Law that allows all Washington US politicians to engage in insider-trading or to accept bribes from US companies), freed Apple from the consequences of negative ITC rulings (against all principles of International Law). A Law that is selectively applied is no law whatsoever. So, King Obama is choosing to punish Samsung on behalf of his Apple sponsors. The ITC ruling is irrelevant because the US no longer respects the ruling of this body.
Are you Yanks happy with this situation? Well you were happy when you murdered two million people in Iraq, and destroyed that secular society. You were pleased when Obama the butcher murdered the people protecting their secular regime in Libya. You are happy when Obama the genocidal war criminal sends the greatest terrorist army ever seen in Human history into the secular society of Syria, in order to create an extremist Islamic horror story run by the depraved women-hating, gay-hating beasts that rule in Saudi Arabia.
Hitler had to pretend to be a nice guy at home, because the German people felt they had very high moral standards. By contrast, Obama simply has to say "let's murder those dirty foreigners" and you Yanks stand up and scream "F**k yeah, America is the best". Where the hell do you think this is going to end up?
Does Apple really have to cheat, steal and bribe in order to have great success? Obviously not. But, given no reverse pressure from the moral climate in America, Apple simply gives in to temptation, and allows its wealth to achieve whatever it can, without regard to what is right or decent. But how the hell do you think the rest of the world views your despicable companies, and your despicable presidents? The world has always admired the business success of the USA, and the entrepreneurship of the US people. This alone ensured the US a position at the top table. But this repugnant evil that infests the USA today ensures the US has no long term future - you Yanks want another World War, and everything you do is in preparation for this. Why the hell do you idiots think you are growing your military power so obscenely, and engaging in as many murderous wars against defenceless nations as you can arrange?
These ITC shenanigans are the tiniest symptom of an infinitely greater problem.
Why are you shilling for Apple?
Yeah, no dodge there. They just have a non-existent office that also -- just by sheer accident of good ethical business practices -- makes 30% of all of their worldwide profit. Apple uses a different loophole than other corporations, but its still a loophole. They paid a fair amount of taxes in 2012 because the writing is on the wall -- even McCain understands that corporations simply aren't paying their fair share.
Also, I'm not sure when corporate accountability became unfashionable, but you need to cut that shit out. America needs a reasonable tax base to take better care of its needs and if it allows every major corporation to avoid paying taxes, we won't have the money for important things like transportation infrastructure and an educated populace that can compete in the future economy.
You can't sell iPads to people who can't read, or who spend all of their money on inefficient ways of commuting and car repairs.
Do YOU think it's fair to patent gestures, shiny icons, and rectangles? We can go down this rabbit hole all day.
...because none of these actors^H^H^H^H^H^Hclowns care about where the factories and the jobs are located. This is about politicians granting favors to extremely rich corporations, who in turn help the politicans pay for their campaigns and give them and their appointees revolving-door jobs.
I suppose it is only fair?
Great business model. If you can't win in court by the merits of your case, pay off a corrupt president and he'll make those inconvenient judgements "go away".
to use the Patent system as a weapon against innovation? I bought my first $57 android phone last week, and it outperforms the iPhone 4 it was replacing. It seems like its against my interests as a consumer to be limited to a device that retails at over 10x that figure.
Linksys iPhone that is...
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/news/2007/12/linksys_iphone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18PbwYdjsps
I hope Apple and Samsung implode at the same time.
forgive me but aren't the purpose of these government agencies to make things better for the people...
How long has it been(if ever) since that was the case, do you have any sections of government that uphold the laws and hold an interest in doing what is best for the people...
Obama got $308,081 from Apple in 2012
Obama got $1,000 from Samsung in 2012 (as $250 and $750)
Even disallowing the home team advantage, I really would be surprised if Obama does Samsung the same favour he extended to Apple last week and overturns this ban.
Da Blog
Using the loopholes requres money to do. That means that only those paying a large value to avoid can afford paying them. Therefore avoiding taxes "legally" means those who have less than justifies the cost will have to pay more of the bill. That will mean that some of those will now be paying enough to make an ROI in avoiding taxes, leading to a slight feedback into the lower classes who will have to foot an even bigger bill.
This means that YOU avoiding taxes are a free rider, leeching off the lower classes to get your society without paying for it.
That's douchbaggery.
It's pretty invariant, but running a modern first-world society costs 40% of GDP to do. This, despite huge variations in how taxes are collected or what is spent on, has varied by only a couple of percent in the last 60+ years.
It just costs that much to have a justice system, educated workers, infrastructure, fire, police and ambulance and an armed forces.
If you're paying much less than 40% in total taxes, then you're leeching off others. Sponging off their work and money.
And that's been not only a douchebag, that's being a deliberate douche.
Obama's actions are kind of predictable since he is on the Apple payroll.
I guess the message is that corruption pays in the US.
Whenever some tax loopholes are going to be cut, or just even changed, the Rightwingnut brigade rant and rave about it.
Many politicians make money as executives or owners of large businesses.
Media is all large business.
So the politicians aren't "do nothing", they're TOLD to do nothing about this by the wealthy and connected, of which the politicians are only a small subset of, and to ensure that this is so, this elite class will raise the dogwhistle of "government interference in the small business".
The lack of action is ENTIRELY down to the corporations you're trying to avoid the blame falling on.
Corporate executives and directors are people and those people represent themselves in politics. These aren't politicians not doing anything, this is corporate executives not doing anything.
And these douches run corporations. If you disbelieve me, try telling your CEO that you think they need to change a product line or he should pay more corporation tax so the burden of all the people he pays is reduced (allowing him to cut wages without pricing the work out of the market).
He won't do it.
You can't do it.
You won't be able to do it if you made 75% of the workforce want it. If the executive board and directors don't want it, the needs of the vast majority of the workers in the corporation can do NOTHING.
And they can't leave, especially in the USA since you gut the welfare state (by screaming holy murder about it every chance you get if you're not using it at that time) meaning that leaving because the majority want a change (and a majority that would leave a government crippled by not listening to), you are no longer covered by health insurance (and won't be able to get cover if you had some pre-existing condition that turned up during that previous period of cover), no free schooling for your kids, nothing to help pay rent, nothing to help find work or move. And likely a blacklisting to not employ that troublemaker, meaning you have to move.
This is why the government is far more reliable a party for controlling you than your corporation: an overwhelming majority of the workers that does not consist of the executives or directors can do NOTHING. A much smaller even minority of voters who want change in their government can get it, even if none of the politicians are on board.
And don't think the shareholder status changes that. The executive board has a significantly higher proportion of the shares in the average large corporation than any middle-or-lower class owner of shares, so again you're ignored by the minority because if they (who are going to be executive or director level in general, even if at different corporations) are not on board, your opinion does not matter, in this case because your opinion is weighted by the number of shares you have.
If your statements are not to be taken literally, that is LITERALLY your advice: disbelieve everything you say.
Or are we meant to only believe the things you get right and anything you get wrong is not meant to be "literally true" and therefore you are now demanding you are 100% reliable ex-posto-facto and that it is up to US to work out where you are right or wrong and therefore taking anything you say as true is, again, 100% useless and we are best off not believing a word you say and ignoring it, because we'd have to find out for ourselves from another and more reliable source, whether any given statement from you is true or not, making reading your statements pointless.
But if you really want us to consider your points pointless, then why the fuck did you even make them???
What YOU don't seem to know is that Samsung offered "the same deal as anybody else". The cost to license is a % of final product price.
Apple margins are massive in the industry and therefore didn't want part of that margin going on licensing, so they didn't want to pay that % of final product price, UNLIKE EVERYONE ELSE DID.
Apparently, you don't know what Samsung offered, hence your insistence that Apple is hard done by.
2.4% of the final product price is what the contract is for anyone. They can offer up equivalent patent licensing in place of (some of) the cash, but
a) Apple refused to license
b) has zero standards-essential patents to offer for equivalent value
You want apple to avoid paying anything because Ericsson paid in patents for wireless phone technology (essential for a wireless phone) instead of cash?
That's a pile of shite.
Apparently, at least if it's for Apple, the F in FRAND means "FREE!". Making Apple and their fanbois the real 100% genuine freetards.
Apple fanbois: the contract license price is the same contract license price as every other FRAND licensee. Samsung has no right to make worse deals, as pointed out, but it also has NO RIGHT to offer better deals. That's the price. Take it or leave it.
But apparently if you're apple, then you get a secret third option: take it without paying the fees.
If they aren't worth the price, don't use them. Use your own tech, invent it yourself. Or see how well a phone works without the phone part (therefore why the price is a % of the final product price: see Hollywood contracts for % of the gross being much lower than the % of profit, there's a reason why this is nominally rational)
I really would be surprised if Obama does Samsung the same favour he extended to Apple last week and overturns this ban.
I know it's fun to quote the campaign contributions and imply the decision was all about the money or to imply that Obama is protecting the American company from the evil foreign company but the simple reality is Samsung obtained a ban using Standards Essential, FRAND patents. Apple's ban is not related to Standards Essential, FRAND patents.
That is why Obama is not going to step in and overturned the ban on Samsung products.
That, and only that, is the reason.
The patent filing date shows Jan 5, 2007 as per the link below however Nokia N91 from Q2, 2005 did the exact same thing. http://www.patentbuddy.com/Patent/7912501 http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n91-1154.php
Samsung obtained a ban using Standards Essential, FRAND patents
The substance of the original ITC ban on Apple notes that Samsung offered Apple FRAND access via a standard percentage licence fee for the FRAND patents. What is unusual is that Apple refused to pay that licence fee but then did not return with a counter-offer. Apple basically refused to negotiate and continued importing products using the patents but without paying anything. Given Apple's refusal to even begin negotiating that seems evident bad faith, the ITC had no option but to decide against them
Of course, now that Obama vetoed that decision, now you have the absurd position where a hold of patents essential for the operation of a technology is not getting paid for them by a major patent abuser, and now has limited recourse. Whereas the holder of some minor design and questionable methods patents has a new import ban still standing. So thanks to Obama's protectionism, we've entered topsy turvy patent land, where essential patents become worthless, and design patents become coin.
Da Blog
That is a bunch of Crap. FRAND patents have to be licenced by others just the same as any patent. Usually FRAND patents require significant amounts of R&D expense because they are related directly to HOW THINGS WORK, not on how they LOOK AND FEEL. IF you know anything about negotiations at all, then you would know that leverage is always required in a negotiation. Quite simply both parties have got to be able to walk away from the deal. If there is legislation that states one party is not able to walk away from the deal then that party is at a negotiating disadvantage. So if a FRAND patent owner is not able to walk away then the only lever they have left is product ban on anyone using their patent without a licence. Basically Apple wants Samsung to give their FRAND patents license away, and now because of Obama they have lost any negotiating lever. In other words OBAMA IS IN BED WITH APPLE PURE AND SIMPLE, Obama is playing favorites and should not have got involved in this issue at all. Very Very Unethical, I used to think that he was ethical, but he is just as sleazy as the rest of them.
Hitler made laws that it was illegal for Jews to own property, and Jews could not have national citizenship. Then he proceeded to evict them, destroy their property, and when they complained the answer was THAT IS THE LAW. Of course those actions were visible to the public, and Hitler had to convince the public they were "reasonable" laws and actions. The other more dreadful actions he had to keep SECRET from the public because they probably could not have been convinced that these were reasonable actions. So if there were any laws about it, these would have to be secret too. Analogy: I'm the president, I can intervene because it's THE LAW.
That's from individuals, not from the company. Obama got NO money from Apple; he got money from Apple employees. Crucial difference.
My Sony Ericsson W600i from 2004 did that via Bluetooth, and did a great job. How could Apple patent existing functionality that is in market production?